To start with, it's fall, which is obviously the best season. This morning, Jeff let me sleep in and lounge around, which was fab. Eventually, I got up and we all got cleaned up to go to soccer.

He kicks!

After soccer, we went to the Original Pancake House with my mom and dad. Someday, I will get there before we are starving and we will order the Dutch Baby and the huge Apple Pancake. They ask for an extra 30 minutes to make those, and I am never ready to wait 30 minutes.

We split crab cakes benedict and cinnamon apple pancakes. The boy had rainbow pancakes and hot chocolate. They were yum.

A friend recommended that we go to Triple B Farms in Monongahela, PA and I've been wanting to go. It's about a 40 minute drive from our house, which is not too bad, but certainly a commitment.

As soon as we got in the car it started raining. It rained. And rained. And kept raining. I told Jeff that I was POSITIVE it would stop raining when we got there and it'd be double awesome because it wouldn't be busy, since everyone would have bailed due to the rain. It was a foolproof scheme! The guys looked pretty skeptical, but we kept going anyway.

Pretty Farm

I swear, as soon as we parked the car, the rain stopped. By the time we paid and got inside, the sun came out. It was like our trip to the farm was blessed by whichever higher power you prefer. The rest of the day seemed pretty amazing to me after that. It was sunny. And warm. And not crowded. (That last part is especially important for us introverts. Crowds make us super cranky.)

We went through a rope maze and a haunted house and down a cool tube slide. We water-raced rubber duckies by pumping a hand pump.

I got to see plenty of goats. I <3 goats and gnomes. I also <3 lilacs and coffee and pumpkin pie and tea from that Teavana place in the mall.

Is this a goat? Yak? Something?

This is totally a goat. Love the rectangular pupils.

The guys used a ginormous slingshot to launch tennis balls over towards the apple orchard.

Jeff claims that I have no idea how fun this is.
Jeff is usually right.

We got hopelessly lost in a corn maze. Last year, we went to a different farm and the maze was basically a path with a lot of turns. Not so, with this maize maze! We spent about a half hour wandering around before we found our way out.

Seriously, it was the only annoying part of the day. It went on forever. Also, when you let the five year old make all of your decisions, you don't start out with a plan. Then Jeff insisted that he wrote a program in college that did this and we could just make all lefts and get out. The maze was full of loops, however, and that was not an efficient exit strategy.

Our kid does not want to miss out on *anything*. When he found out that we could pick apples, we were basically required to do that. I did manage to get us on a hayride first. I don't think I have ever been on a hayride so I was pretty jazzed about it.

I was surprised how fun picking apples was. They are easy to see because they are so shiny red. When you get high enough up in the orchard where the apples aren't picked over, it's pretty easy to fill up your bag. Jeff and I went berry picking last summer with a friend and her and my little boys. Jeff was kind of whiny about it because he said he detests berry picking. Turns out, berry picking out in the country where Jeff grew up consists of "hiking for an hour into the woods to pick berries from a big wooded mess of berries". Picking berries (or apples) from a farm you pay to get into consists of going on a hayride up to where the nice wide rows of apples are, and then moseying down a path leisurely filling your bag. Totally different experience.

We picked our five dollars worth of apples and realized that the rain was probably coming back.

Ominous Skies in the Apple Orchard

One thing I failed to take a good picture of was the cider doughnuts. We wandered into the, er, dining barn? Not sure. The covered place with food. Our friend from New York is always talking about how good cider doughnuts are, and Triple B is the only place in Pittsburgh that has them, from what I can tell. The whole drive out, I was thinking "it will rain, but at least I can get a cider doughnut, and stop caring about those. They can't possibly be as good as I keep hearing. How could they possibly compare to those doughnuts full of chocolate whipped cream? That's just crazy talk."

Friends? I was wrong. Cider doughnuts are AMAZING. We got 3 and some hot cider and sat down. About two bites into his, Jeff said "we should have got a dozen". I pointed out that we could get some before we left and he said "wait here, I'm getting a dozen". Hah!

On the ride home, we determined that the deal is this: Cider Doughnuts are amazing in a completely different way the doughnuts full of pudding or chocolate whipped cream. They are effectively a completely different kind of pastry. A delicious, delicious pastry. If you have them, get them now. They might be the best thing you can buy for 75 cents a pop.

It was a perfect day. We bought some fudge and picked our pumpkins and drove home.